Nin, that feeling you're talking about, though the participants might not have called it romance, seems from this distance palpable, and very real.

I marvel at the ability of Russell Lee to work unobtrusively in such situations; it appears the photos are being taken by a trusted observer whose presence is noninterfering and whose detachment is at the same time kept intact. There is a naturalness about the scenes.

He came from a small town in northern Illinois (Ottawa) and that might have given him an advantage other photographers lacked, in a setting like this. It was such settings to which he was always drawn. (He would go on to do wonderful work in the Spanish-American communities of thhe Southwest.)

It's apparently a pleasant occasion, a subdued celebration of sorts. They have brought in the pinto bean harvest, the beans are in the bean shed, the field work is suspended, this is the Fair.

This is direct seeing, a quality that Lee seems to possess in abundance on this assignment in Pie Town, and a skill he shared with his FSA colleague, Walker Evans. His compositions satisfy; they answer an innate desire for harmony and balance. Right from the start we see this in the topmost photo, when a woman strides from the left into a picture where each figure in the crowd almost seems posed, as Velazquez might do in Las Meninas, but—except for Lee’s choosing the moment to trip the shutter—is entirely random: the boy turning, his bare foot extended; the dainty, white gloved hands of the invisible woman to whom he turns; the hats, the faces. And in another photo, the gestures of the women meeting at the fair and the red-haired boy standing apart . . .

Your vision of living “up on the Divide” is like this. It catches the essence of “the scratched-out bounty” of a life on the margins.

"Direct seeing" -- that's spot on. Lee's work does indeed often evoke Evans's curious, frequently reiterated comment about composition, and finding the moment when it clicks: "God made it that way." Variously reiterated..."God did that, I wouldn't change it."

There was maybe just the slightest nudge here and there by Walker, though -- just making sure that God had got it right.

And of course things like colour and flash(bulbs, that is) were disdained by Evans, who was a bit arrogant in that respect.

yes to Russell Lee"choosing the moment the trip the shutter" -- each fleeting moment caught, as in that one with the women and children at the car (New Mexico license plate 91-338, woman in back (open) seat w/ blond child leaning toward woman in red-orange sweater, her right foot tucked up and right hand on roof, girl looking down. . .